Andrew Garfield Describes the “Pure Bliss” of Working With Martin Scorsese

In director Ramin Bahrani’s bracing new drama 99 Homes, Andrew Garfield plays a young, struggling father who goes to work for the ruthless man (Michael Shannon) who has just evicted him and his family from their home. We recently got on the phone with Garfield, who was on the other side of the world filming his next movie, to talk about his new film, and his next two big projects. Garfield gave thoughtful answers throughout our chat, seeming humble but excited as he embarks on the post-Spider-Man phase of his career. He told us about the “kismet” of getting the 99 Homes script and mulled over how a group of Hollywood folks can tell a blue-collar story without being “patronizing.” He also talked about the adventure of shooting a film in Taiwan with the one and only Martin Scorsese, which he described as “pure bliss.”

Vanity Fair: Thanks for taking some time to chat. I understand you’re all the way in Australia.

Andrew Garfield: Yeah, I’m just kind of waking up. But yeah, very happy to be so far away from my life for a minute. It’s nice to, I don’t know, to feel a little removed while working.

How did you get involved with 99 Homes?

I was doing Death of a Salesman in New York. And Ramin is a New Yorker, he lives in Brooklyn, and he’d seen the play. He’d never seen that play onstage, and I think it really floored him and gutted him, he couldn’t really move after seeing it. Which, of course, is the intention of that play. I think the themes that Miller was dealing with and wrestling with are similar to what Ramin is interested in exploring. So I think he felt this kind of kismet thing. The character was originally written a bit older than me, but I think Ramin started thinking maybe he could be younger. So we had a lovely lunch at Bubby’s in Tribeca, which was sort of where I was living at the time. It was Iranian New Year and it was his birthday as well, and Ramin was very ceremonial when he handed me the script.

I knew by page 30. My dad happened to be in town visiting [while I read it]. And obviously a big thing about the film is the relationship between fathers and sons, so I was reading it while my father was around and he had a look at it as well. He had the exact same response, so I knew that there was something . . . cosmic and strange, some big wound that was being explored in the film, on page 30. That’s the eviction, on page 30. Me and my dad responded in the same way. We’ve obviously had two very different experiences of life so far, so to find some common need for the story was remarkable.

That eviction scene is so harrowing. And scarily real. How did you achieve that kind of immediacy and naturalness?

It was very improvised. We didn’t know what items we were going to bring with us, we didn’t know that we were going to let them in the door. I didn’t even know that I was going to open the door. What enabled us that kind of freedom in that particular scene was that Michael’s character has a very rigid set of guidelines to stand by in terms of the eviction. So, you put cops there and we can’t close the door, that takes care of that. And then we have two minutes and then we’re going to be tossed out on the street and put in jail, so, O.K., that takes care of that. It created this time limit and time frame. There wasn’t anywhere to go but where the structure of the scene had us go. Unless I decided to start a fight with a police officer, which, y’know, would have ended the film very early and in a different way.

And thank God we had Laura [Dern], who’s just a genius and one of my favorite actors, even more so after working with her. And of course Michael doesn’t need any words of praise. And then on top of that you had these two police officers, one of which is this guy Randy who is a police officer, and has worked evictions. So he knew exactly what he was doing. [Filming the scene] was horrible, it was awful, but also kind of wonderful.

How do you avoid being just the Hollywood people who show up to tell this very working-class kind of story? The film has this great credibility to it.

I think it’s an intention, really. An intention from every crew member and every cast member and of course the intention of the director. I don’t think the people who would say yes to such a thing would run the risk of being those kind of self-congratulatory, grandiose, patronizing Hollywood [people]. It’s maybe that thing of, like attracts like. It wasn’t really a consideration, I didn’t really think about it . . . I’m trying to patch together an answer! Because I do think that maybe it’s just that the material attracts the right people to it.

Speaking of credibility, you do a lot of construction work, carpentry mostly, in the film, and you seem to know what you’re doing. Did you have to learn all that for the film?

Luckily it’s something I’ve been doing for the last five years, just in my spare time, one of the many hobbies that I have to have as an actor, just waiting for that right song to come on the radio. I love it. My granddad was a carpenter and a woodworker. I didn’t know that until I started doing it, I’ve always just been drawn to it. It’s a lovely little kind of self-soothing thing that I get to do. But I had to learn a few more things for the purposes of [the film]. Like, I’d never used a nail gun before, and I’d never framed a house. The biggest thing I’d made was a rocking chair.

That’s one of the great things about being an actor, you get to learn. Like right now I’m learning how to be an Army medic in the 1940s. Which is kind of wonderful. You get to go back to school every other month and learn something new. Last year I was in training to be a Jesuit priest. It was absolutely wonderful and fascinating. It’s one of the many gifts of this job.

That Jesuit priest film is Martin Scorsese’s Silence, about Jesuits in 17th-century Japan. What was that shooting experience like? Were you actually in Japan?

We shot in Taiwan, doubling as Japan. It’s so hard to sum up. It was epic and small, simultaneously. It’s a very internal journey through this external wilderness. But it’s mostly internal, mostly an inside conversation, a conversation with God.

What about the Scorsese factor? Was there any fear in starting the project, knowing he’d be right there, on set?

Well, I’m always afraid. I mean, I’m afraid right now. It was such a big buildup, we were delayed again and again and again. So I was out in Taiwan for three or four weeks, just twiddling my thumbs, getting ready to go and being delayed and waiting to know if we were going to shoot. So all the energy was building up to a kind of fever pitch. When finally we were off, I think I had enough steam and fire built up to last me the whole four months, just to shoot it in one take. It was incredible, when we finally got going. And being on set with him is . . . you know, you’re working with a master. And he surrounds himself with masters.

It was just kind of pure bliss, really, to work with these brilliant artists. As the actor, the dream is to be surrounded by people who you feel are a safety net, wherein you can play and find the truth of the moment instead of feeling like you have to do everything else, or you have to make sure you nail it or otherwise they’ll use the wrong take, blah, blah, blah. But with Marty, and with [his longtime editor] Thelma Schoonmaker, you know that their choices are going to be much better than yours. So that’s the dream, really.

And you like being away from it all while filming, then in Taiwan, now in Australia?

It’s really nice to be single-minded, and immersed, I guess. I really, really do like it right now. There’s something really nice about being isolated from your life.